In vitroscreening for salt tolerance in basmati rice genotypes through Analysis of Variance

Abstract

Global climate changes manifests itself as wide range of abiotic stresses leading to a series of physiological, biochemical and molecular changes that adversely affect the growth and productivity of rice (Oryza sativa L.). In this regard, there is lim-ited knowledge and profiling reports of exclusive, more popular basmati rice in relation to their salini-ty stress tolerance. Laboratory mediated physiologi-cal and biochemical screening for a selected set of 20 lowland rice landraces was done in induced drought and salinity stress conditions. All the geno-types showed significant variation in callus induc-tion and plant regeneration responses. Callus induc-tion and plant regeneration percentage decreased with the increase of salt doses. No basmati variety appeared as the best variety in terms of plant regen-eration in most of the cases at different levels of the salts (0–0.6%) while Basmati 370 a traditional in-cluding all the traditional showed their inferiority for callus induction and plant regeneration when high quantity of salt treatment were given. It was concluded that salt tolerant aromatic rice varieties can be obtained employing salt stress in in vitro condition. The obtained database can be used for varietal identification, characterization in relation to salinity stress tolerance.